Insight into the Kinetic Influence of Oxygen Vacancies on the WO3 Photoanodes for Solar Water Oxidation

Minji Yang; Huichao He; Jinyan Du; Huarong Peng; Gaili Ke; Yong Zhou

doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b02365

Insight into the Kinetic Influence of Oxygen Vacancies on the WO₃ Photoanodes for Solar Water Oxidation

J Phys Chem Lett. 2019 Oct 17;10(20):6159-6165. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b02365. Epub 2019 Oct 1.

Authors

Minji Yang¹, Huichao He¹, Jinyan Du¹, Huarong Peng², Gaili Ke¹, Yong Zhou³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Environmental-Friendly Energy Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering , Southwest University of Science and Technology , Mianyang 621010 , China.
² College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , Chongqing University , Chongqing 400030 , China.
³ Ecomaterials and Renewable Energy Research Center, School of Physics , Nanjing University , Nanjing 211102 , China.

PMID: 31552737
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b02365

Abstract

Improvements to solar water oxidation performance for WO₃ photoanodes due to oxygen vacancies have in general been ascribed to thermodynamic effects. Detailed insights into the water oxidation kinetics for WO₃ photoanodes with oxygen vacancies are still lacking. Here, our experimental and computational investigations revealed that the water oxidation pathway on WO₃ photoanodes with oxygen vacancies is more inclined to follow the four-hole pathway. This finding reasonably explained the common observations of higher faradaic efficiency for oxygen evolution, better stability, and faster kinetics for water oxidation usually achieved on the WO₃ photoanodes with oxygen vacancies.